Anyone else notice that the ISO/IEC 27000-series is exploding. First we had 27001 for managing security (ISMS), then 17799 was renamed to 27002 for consistency with 27001. Now, OMFG:
# ISO/IEC 27000 – an introduction and overview for the ISMS Family of Standards, plus a glossary of common terms
# ISO/IEC 27003 – an ISMS implementation guide
# ISO/IEC 27004 – a standard for information security management measurements
# ISO/IEC 27005 – a standard for information security risk management
# ISO/IEC 27007 – a guideline for ISMS auditing (focusing on the management system)
# ISO/IEC 27008 – a guideline for Information Security Management auditing (focusing on the security controls)
# ISO/IEC 27011 – an ISMS implementation guideline for the telecommunications industry (also known as X.1051)
# ISO/IEC 27031 – a specification for ICT readiness for business continuity
# ISO/IEC 27032 – a guideline for cybersecurity (essentially, ‘being a good neighbor’ on the Internet)
# ISO/IEC 27033 – IT network security, a multi-part standard currently known as ISO/IEC 18028:2006
# ISO/IEC 27034 – a guideline for application security
# ISO/IEC 27799 – an ISMS implementation guideline for the healthcare industry
What happened to 6? Perhaps I should be pleased with this laundry list of options, but in fact it makes life quite a bit more complicated right now. I just had to explain 27003 even though it is still in draft form, just because someone wanted to work on ISO compliance for 27002. If you live in a country, let alone a state, that has compliance governance of its own, will you deal with the ISO? Something tells me if you do business across national boundaries this may be your only path of communication, and that is what the ISO is banking upon. On the other hand, I have already met a few people who think international standards are somehow an insult to their sense of national pride and want nothing to do with them.
Last Friday our friend and colleague, brother and mentor, Bug suffered a critical heart failure. Those who met him knew him as a loving and compassionate cat, always interested in taking time to enjoy life with others and show them the finer sides of living.
He was an inspiration and an ally through thick and thin. Bug stood strong next to me, providing strength and energy when and where it was needed most. I loved him very much and he will be missed.
Dana Goodyear’s blog turned me on to this Aimee Man video, that somehow seems appropriate:
Who has said it any better than Alfred, Lord Tennyson?
I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world’s altar-stairs
That slope thro’ darkness up to God,
I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.
Be well and be safe Bug. My thoughts are with you. Thank you for your help in saving poetry.
The BBC advises us to avoid being upbeat in our business speak. The last thing you want to say, apparently, is that you are going forward
…the really lethal thing about the whole language of business – is that it is so brainlessly upbeat. All the celebrating, the reaching out, the sharing, and the championing in fact grind one down. Several decades too late, it is as if business has caught up with the linguistic spirit of 1968. The hippies got over it, but businessmen are holding tight.
Funny stuff and very prescient.
It seems that the less one has to say, the more likely one is to reach for a going forward as a crutch. Politicians find it comforting for this reason. “We are going forward” poor Hillary Clinton said just before the last, fatal primary last month when it became indisputable that she was going nowhere of the kind.
I have met many executives in America who hate the term “failure”. They think it lowers spirits and becomes an obstacle to success. Unfortunately, it actually is the lack of communication about failures that let them linger.
Blue sky thinking, pushing the envelope – the problem with office-speak is that it cloaks the brutal modern workplace in such brainlessly upbeat language…
Presumably it is ok to upbeat, just not brainless about it.
America is, I think, the only country in the world which permits advertising of drugs which are available only through your doctor.
The insidious message is simple; if your doctor is not offering you this drug, maybe you should be asking for it.
Americans do accept advertising in areas where it does not tend to appear elsewhere.
The really good part comes at the start, when the author tries to explain beef jerky:
…an American food whose classiness you can judge from the fact that it is mainly found in petrol stations.
You could make it yourself at home by cutting a tough, thin steak into tiny strips and leaving them on a sunny window ledge to dry when you went away for your summer holiday.
Little does he realize that good beef jerky is hard to find, but it does exist, just like real food in America.
The point of the article seems to be that watching for legal disclaimers/compliance in marketing is practically a form of entertainment of its own.
a blog about the poetry of information security, since 1995
